We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly regarded for its robust security features, including geofencing, firewalling, IPS, antivirus, and a user-friendly interface. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in embedded machine learning, real-time attack prevention, and the ability to accurately identify applications.
Fortinet FortiGate-VM needs enhancements in key activation, log management, cloud management, MFA offerings, web filter options, application inspection, GUI features, bandwidth issues, VPN connectivity, pricing, performance, and documentation. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls require improvements in SD-WAN customization, best practices, machine learning capabilities, troubleshooting tools,next-generation capabilities, rule creation, monitoring interface, bug fixing, configuration support, IoT security, traffic shaping, machine learning for virus prevention, security functions, usability, training programs, SSL inspection, external dynamic list feature, internet filtering, API integration, and bug fixing.
Service and Support: Some customers have praised the support team of Fortinet FortiGate-VM for their quick response times and knowledge. However, other customers have mentioned slow response times and difficulties in finding information quickly. Customer service for Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls has received mixed reviews. Some customers have praised the knowledgeable support team and timely issue resolution. However, others have mentioned difficulties in reaching the support team and issues with the support ticketing system.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is generally straightforward and easy, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is not complex and easy. Prior knowledge can simplify Fortinet's setup, whereas Palo Alto may require proper planning.
Pricing: Fortinet offers flexible pricing options with no extra expenses, while Palo Alto is considered pricier. Nevertheless, Palo Alto is known for its reliability and high performance as a firewall solution.
ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers enhanced stability and heightened security. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide greater visibility, reporting capabilities, and streamlined management.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is the preferred solution as it is highly recommended due to its easy setup, robust security features, cost-effectiveness, and satisfactory ROI. Users find it user-friendly, easy to deploy, and with an intuitive interface.
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"FortiGate-VM has many valuable features: it's easy to use, it's intuitive, it's got very good traffic inspection features, it's got comprehensive filtering categories, and it has an extensive threat database, using FortiGuard."
"Use of this product does not require daily interactions."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"We like FortiGate-VM's IPS features and its ability to create multiple virtual firewalls."
"Fortinet is user-friendly."
"The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us."
"In terms of specific features, I like FortiGate's load balancing, interface, and priority on the network."
"While the stability maybe isn't quite to the level of Cisco, it is a very cost-effective solution. It's cheap compared to Cisco."
"The most significant benefit is threat protection. Anti-malware uses signatures, so dynamic analyzers like WildFire are the best way to protect the company. It is a firewall based on application control, user ID, and security policy. We can use it based on user and application ID without a stateless firewall or TCPIP ports."
"DNS Security is a good feature because, in the real world with web threats, you can block all web threats and bad sites. DNS Security helps to prevent those threats. It's also very helpful with Zero-day attacks because DNS Security blocks all DNS requests before any antivirus would know that such requests contain a virus or a threat to your PC or your network."
"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."
"There are many valuable features, such as wireless cloud features."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities."
"The most valuable features are application inspection and sandboxing. Application inspection decides where traffic is transmitted. If I have a perimeter report for a particular service, then other services or malicious services cannot use an open port. In this way, application inspection is doing a fantastic job. We also have a very good sandbox with almost no rate limit. It will inspect any file that comes in and goes out in a dedicated patch to identify malware. Therefore, these two things help me to protect our organization from any bad actors."
"The best feature is the packet inspection; compared to solutions like Cisco and FortiGate, Palo Alto's packet inspection is much less CPU intensive, allowing it to detect threats embedded within packages more quickly and efficiently."
"It has the typical features of a next-generation firewall. It can do application control, antivirus, content filtering, etc."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"We are experiencing a failed login issue. There should also be improvements in functionalities we store to enhance our services."
"I have had a data issue with physical devices that could improve."
"The solution is fairly complex."
"One thing that can be better is added automation. And, on top of that, enhanced security when it comes to the automation itself."
"We have had some stability issues."
"Data backup functionality could be included in the product."
"It would be better if it could provide you with options before completely blocking anything through the web filter. If you are doing a deep SSL inspection on the site if it says it's expired, it doesn't give you the option to continue at your own risk. I can't say that it's bad, but SSL internally isn't really a requirement. However, its security features can help. Right now, we have people going out and spending on purchasing the SSL certificates for internal sites."
"The solution's web-filtering configuration could be better."
"Most other VPN clients include mobile VPNs but Palo Alto does not."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's one of the most expensive firewall solutions on the market."
"We would like to see the external dynamic list for this solution improved. The current version does not automatically block malicious IP addresses, which would be very useful."
"The whole performance takes a long time. It takes a long time to configure."
"There is a web-based GUI to do management, but you need to know how the machine or firewall operates. There are hundreds of different menus and options. I have used other firewalls before. Just implementing or designing a policy with Palo Alto, if you want a certain port to be open to different IP addresses, then that could take 20 to 25 clicks. That is just testing it out. It is quite complex to do. Whereas, with other places, you tell it, "Okay, I want this specific port open and this IP address to have access to it." That was it. However, not with Palo Alto, which is definitely more complex."
"The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase."
"We have not taken Palo Alto's firewall management solution because it's too expensive and we don't feel it delivers significant value."
"Technical support could be faster."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most.
PA is good at app control, web filtering and such like, they have always been top of the pile there. The GUI is very good, and their product is very user-focused.
Fortinet is good for scalability and predictable high throughput (ASICs in the hardware), and useful things like authentication flexibility, CLI config (if you have any networking/Cisco people, they always seem to prefer CLI over GUI) and have better OT features, maybe relevant to your manufacturing use?
Fortinet seem to have a broader integration offering with their security fabric than PA do, plus they can do Fortinet-based wifi, switching, etc. Depends if you are prepared to go all-in with a single vendor.
Hi,
Both FT and PA have compelling features for large Enterprises. I would like to add a few good points about Fortinetwhich might be helpful ( from my 13 years of engagement with them as Distributor and Partner)
Fortinet:
Have higher throughput; which comes with competitive rates
Wide range of models to select to meet your requirement, without spending heavliy
Outstanding customer support and very active customer care team
Easly available skilled resources from the channel for deployment and post-implementation support
Regards
Abhilash
Hello. The question is what you are going to have as a result of application